Dreamed of paradise

We come into this world with a whole lot of big dreams.
Somebody wants to be president. Just because it looks so cool to have thousands of people watching while you're on tv making a speech. Somebody wants to be a racer because you want to ride that fast. While some little girls want to princesses, find their prince charming and live happily ever after.
Me? I just wanted to be a mommy. Clearly because I adored my own. She seemed to be a mind reader. Every kid that age thinks his/her mommy/daddy know and understand his/her emotions better than himself/herself. Why? Well of course! Because mommy knows you're hungry before you do and she knows you have to pee before you pack up for a long drive while you realize right after she's told you four times and you've refused four times and the car has rolled on to the highway.
Well do you think they know you best now?
Haha big joke.
No those big guys don't get it apparently. Neither does that boy you love. Or his best friend. Nor your countless face book friends.

9999 out of every 10,000 kids are swiftly, inadvertently de-geniusized by grown ups. Ah well I could have been the next Einstein - but mom dad and all the uncles and aunties prevented it.

We used to get angry and upset because of loud noises or because we didn't get our food on time. Now we pull out our guns at the red light. We would spread our arms and think the world was at our feet at the highest point of the swing. Now we're afraid - all the time, that the swing might just bend and break under the pressure. We drown ourselves in the cacophony of the voices saying - 'no'
What happened to those big dreams?
Oh well they changed, altered by all the ifs and buts of the world.
Disillusionment set in. A little bit at least. Weird things started irritating you. People, most of all.
You think 'how could they!' You get disgusted, spend hours and days being a vegetable, in a gloom, brooding.
It does affect us, no matter how much we don't want it to. Show me a person who remains untouched by this and I'll worship him (Howard Roark you should have been real). Thing is you didn't think so, but shit happens. Everyone will tell you that. Keep a dog with you long enough and he'll tell you right at your feet. True story.

I have longed for people before, I have loved people before.
Not like this.
It was not this.

Give me a world, you have taken the world I was.

~ Anne Carson

What do you do about it? Some of us move on. Others spend their lives cleaning up everyone else's poop. We fall down, we get back up. We step on someone's back to get to the next step of the ladder. Yes we do. All of us. In weird twisted upside down ways, that at times even seem noble. Its the way of life. The nature of evolution. Darwin couldn't have been wrong now could he?
We fall down again and we get up again, just a little dirtier and moodier than before.
At some point after the falling down and looking around, you start to get a little bit tired. There's too much noise at times no? Your heart chugs to a tired halt. Reflection we call it.
And because we've always been taught to believe in happy endings, even the most pessimistic of us, we keep going. Because it's fun sometimes to look for the diamond in the haystack. Because even if you want to sleep forever, the sun will continue to blind you every single morning.

when she was just a girl, she expected the world
but it flew away from her reach
so she ran away in her sleep
and dreamed of
paradise

Do you look out over the sea at night?

Do you see the moon and stars reflected on the water?

Do you smell the salt air?
Does it feel like home?
Are you looking at the same patch of sky that I saw?
In that moment, do you feel what I felt?
Do the sirens whisper your name as they whispered mine?
Tell me,

does the siren song in the middle of the night sound like

the wind,

or the stars,

or the fallen angels?

Tell me.

Fair well

'As I'm leaving, a change comes on my eyes
These streets persuading me, with mumbled strange goodbyes
Through the water, through the rain, to the soul of everything
I throw my heart out, on the stones, and I'm almost gone.....'

So why are goodbyes and endings so dramatized in our hearts?
As if they made a significant impression on the turn of events. As if they could do justice to all the things gone wrong in between. As if they could hope to accomplish what wasn't.
Because on the outside, there is hardly ever an extravagant display of emotions, for if there was, it couldn't be enough. The air is full of thoughts and things to say. But at times like these, only the small things are ever said. The big things lurk unsaid, inside. Maybe it's our basic human tendency, or that we have an inherent inertia of change, however hopeful or expectant we might be for tomorrow.
Some things take time. They take time to begin, they take time to develop, and they take time to end fully. But if you play the cards right, beauty creeps up in the most surprising, rewarding and profound places and creates this sort of true, stinging grace.
And maybe it's just the hopeless optimist in me, But I believe what we have once created, we can never lose and all that we love deeply becomes a part of us.

So, what makes an end really? When can you say it really is, 'over' ?
When the lights go out and the curtains come close, is it the climax of the show, even when it continues to find it's way into the never-ending mental film inside of us?

Maybe, for the chain of thoughts and actions we start, there is no written epilogue. Maybe it's like well composed music, where one note blends into the other and you can not distinguish one from the other.

Yes, the world may aspire to vacuousness, insignificance surrounds us. Then, let us drink a cup of coffee. Silence descends, one hears the tick of the clock, curtains cast shadows in the warm pool of light. And with each swallow, time is sublimed.....

Nothing is as far away as one minute ago, and nothing as erratic as the next one.

I'll smile at you, and this....this will be my poignant goodbye.
So, fair well,
until we meet again.

The sounds of silence

You probably think I'm nuts saying the mountains, oceans, and the tree outside my window have no word for people like you and me, but if you look at them long enough, you begin to believe they know everything. They maintain that huge silence we think of as divine, peaceful, a silence that grows in the spring when you and me laugh, learn and grow up beside each other.
But sometimes, peace lives, or peace is birthed, or peace is sustained, in loud and noisy moments, or in breaking an uneasy or unwholesome silence. Somewhere, we know, that without silence, words would lose their meaning.
At times when you get tired of chasing everything, chasing everyone, running down the same old lines, and when you can see nothing else and want to disappear. When you lock yourself up in a little corner of your mind, without food for good thought. All you see is black. In restless sleeps and late night waterfalls, you walk alone. You are cold fusion in trial.
There's no more now. No more pain, no more guilt, no more sorrow. It's a relief really, the darkness, you old friend. It is pure, perfect, thoughtless, vision-less, without end, without borders, the infinite that we each carry within us. And while you bask in the glory of your misery, someone makes you a friendly sign behind a window, or one notices that a flower that was in bud only yesterday has suddenly blossomed, or a letter slips from a drawer....and everything collapses.
You're left stranded and bare, in the naked light, and the wind dies to less than a whisper and you can barely catch your breath because you're thrilled and terrified.
The sounds of silence, were broken because you still have stories to share, promises to keep, people to love and miles to go before you sleep.

There are patterns in chaos. There is hope in the hazy future.

We're all generally warned to be wary of people and that there's a whole lot of 'bad' out there in the world. It's a place to be scared of , and to think and test multiple times, before allowing yourself to let go and trust. What they forget to mention however, is that, even with all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. There are no 'right' or 'wrong' people, just right or wrong actions. People aren't 'bad', circumstances make them so.

We're told to exercise caution in business affairs, because it's a world full of trickery. But they forget to add to not let this blind us to what virtue there is, that there are people who strive for high ideals, and everywhere, life is full of heroism.

Why aren't we ever told to just be ourselves, to not feign affection, neither be cynical about love. For it is lived, and changes definitions everyday, every look, every smile, every glance, every sunrise, every sunset, every action, every inaction, every understanding that takes place, every touch, and every moment that means anything at all. In the face of all disenchantment, it is perennial.

It is considered to be 'naive' to be emotional, and 'foolish' to go on impulse or gut feeling in the face of logic. But the fact that our emotions are actually our built in guidance system, a guidance system that tells us whether we are creating our life in a positive or negative way, is overlooked. Our emotional response to anything says much more about us, our values and our beliefs.

We aren't told of the many fears that are born out of a tired mind, a vexatious spirit and the loneliness that we subject ourselves to, and because we distress ourselves with dark imaginings. Very few of us have nurtured the strength of spirit to shield us in sudden misfortune.

Whatever our labors and aspirations in the noisy confusion of life, they are important and deserve our best efforts, and so we have to keep peace in our soul.

Because whether or not it is clear to us, there is no doubt that the universe IS unfolding as it should.

Too late?

'Oh, I had a lot to say
was thinking on my time away
everything inside, it never comes out right
and we get older and blame turns to shame'





Is it ever too late to say sorry?
Is it ever too late to make it right?
Is it alright to be the reason for someone Else's pain?

Life moves on. True. Does the heart move on? Yes it does.
But it leaves behind a hole, a dented conscience, a misfit piece, a broken promise,
something that was not set right.
Can you ever truly 'move on', as we call it, knowing that you did not even try to correct the wrong you have done?
When you stand in front of the mirror, don't your mistakes, standing in between, disable you to see what you are capable of being?

It is a great thing to be proud. You should be.
You should hold your pretty head high and keep those dazzling eyes of yours forward.
But not so much that you can't hang your head low and say you're sorry with a tear in your eye when you should.
People throw around the word like it's nothing, but it's amazing, the power it holds when it comes from the heart.
It's about more than just mouthing a few syllables. It's about introspection, it's about recognizing the harm you have caused, and having profound regret and sorrow for it.
Ten minutes later, or ten years, the cycle has to be completed. What goes around has to come back around.
Guilt, or regret, is a heavy weight to carry around. Pins you down and makes it harder to breathe.
An honest apology can mend relationships, dissolve anger, soothe shattered pride or mend a broken heart.


I'm sorry for the wrong things I have done.

And solace is finally mine, and yours, I say.

History admits no rules, only outcomes.

What precipitates outcome? vicious acts and virtuous acts.

What precipitates acts? Belief.

Belief is both prize and battle field, both beautiful and frightening, and above all, absolutely vital, within the mind, and in the mind's mirror, the world.

If we believe humanity is a Colosseum of confrontation, exploitation and brutality, such a humanity is surely brought into being. You and I, the moneyed, the privileged, the fortunate, shall not fare so badly in this world, provided our luck holds. What of it, if our consciences itch? Why undermine the dominance of our race, our heritage, and our legacy? Why fight the natural order of things?

Why? Because of this-
One fine day, a purely predatory world, shall consume itself. How far can greed, selfishness and the crave for power be taken? In an individual, selfishness uglifies the soul; for the human species, selfishness is extinction.

If we believe that humanity may transcend truth and claw; if we believe diverse races and creeds can share this world peaceably; if we believe leaders must be just, violence curbed, power accountable and the riches of the Earth and its oceans shared equitably, such a world will come to pass.

I am not deceived. It is the hardest of worlds to make real. Tortuous advances won over generations can be lost by a single stroke of a myopic president's pen or a vainglorious general's sword.

A life spent shaping a world I want my children to inherit, not one I fear my children shall inherit, this strikes me as a life worth living.

You might think your life amounts to no more than one drop in a limitless ocean.
Yet, what is any ocean, but a multitude of drops?



-excerpts taken from 'Cloud Atlas'

In conversation

The moon, she raised her face, but that cold lady didn't say anything, she didn't have to.
As that young girl sat there in silent conversation with the lady who saw everything from a distance, who was an epitome of beauty, in front of whom, people big and small. lay down their deepest feelings, she thought aloud.
Was everyone really as alive as she was? Was everyone capable of feeling the desire and pain she did? If the answer was yes, then the world, the social world, was unbearably complicated, with two billion voices, and each one's thoughts striving in equal importance, and everyone's claim on life as intense, and everyone thinking they were unique, when no one was. One could drown in irrelevance. How important was she really? What set her apart?
The moon looked on, holding answers that she couldn't quite reach. Stones that she carried around, had weighed her down for too long.
From up there, everything looked clear, and true. The butterfly effect that each little thought set off, was so immense, acting as the epicenter of a huge wave, Each little blob of consciousness reflected a different color, mixing and mingling with others to form endless combination's, all the while retaining its real self. It was an ever changing, ever renewing world, that despite everything, remained the same. A distant viewer could never get bored, because it was like trying to comprehend an unsolvable mystery.
Or so the young girl thought. For what it was like from up there too, remained a mystery.
That night, she had been holding a hope for a change in the tide, for what, she did not know. Staring at the white circle for too long, had made her see strange illusions, or so she thought they were. Because it was almost like the lady had winked at her.
She walked away thinking it was the best conversation she had ever had.
Her dented conscience fixed, her troubled mind soothed, she fell into a deep slumber, smiling in her dream.
The lady, as always, had awakened the dream child in her. An so, she dreamed as days went by, and talked to her distant companion as the summer nights died. She lingered in th golden gleam-
Life-what is it, but a dream?

They tell me it's over; you can't wait here no more
But I can't leave; I've been through this before
I think I found my happy place, and lost it just as fast
or maybe I didn't, I just wished it would last.
Knowing is believing they say,
so won't you with me pray?
You can change or stay the same,
there are no rules to frame.
I might have built my wall,
but you might have found a crawl
through into this maze.
And for all it's worth to me,
I'm going to try to keep it just a graze.
With you, it's suffocation
but without, its desolation.
Fleet as an unseen star,
preparing for the inside war.
It's not just you're alone with me,
It's just that you might abruptly flee.
So I'll close my door,
before the rain starts to pour.
Will you sit with me and listen to the stories I have to share?
and renew my faith in all that is fair?
Words fall through me, flashes of images but no text
Anyhow, you never know what's to come next.
Always wanting to leave,
caught in the tangled web I weave
spent so many years in question,
but too many people made a lasting impression.
Should I once again try?
A spirit too needs fuel-it can run dry.

In one way or the other, all of us are dealing with separation - from the loss of someone dear, crushed dreams or something that we do not think we'll get again.
It's a curious thing - separation. It brings along with it the most intense, and the most subtle emotions - grief, nostalgia, melancholy - all longing for a trace of joy.
Consciously, we've forgotten it, moved on - that's the way the human mind works, but the impact is always there, pulling the threads to our actions and decisions. Nothing is ever truly forgotten. It's a weight we carry within us day and night, the weight that keeps us pinned to reality.
In the words of Shakespeare -

How far a candle throws its beam,
so shines a good deed in this naughty world

Everyone has their eyes set on the brilliant flame.
But hardly do people notice the smoke rising above, or the wax melting away, while the candle becomes smaller and smaller, until it dies altogether, quenching the flame along with it.
The story of the flame, the wax and the smoke is one of perpetual separation.
They live together only long enough to create a brilliant light in our minds, and warmth in our hearts.



This post, in particular, is written on this particular day, as it marks a very significant change in my life, and the lessons it taught me.

The dream

She didn't remember much about that night, only very specific things. She remembered him slowly creeping up behind her and letting her hair lose. (he had always said it looked better open) It was flowing everywhere because of the gentle but steady breeze blowing over the vast expanse of the moonlit land. And with every strong stroke, she could smell him. He was there somewhere, playing with her. Daring her to come find him. But whenever she turned to look, she found he haunting stillness of the trees staring back at her. A small voice at the back of her head wondered aloud, 'Why are they so still, so unmoving, death like?'
Just when the hint of confusion began to wrap her mind, she heard something that drowned out every other sense. But was it really there? Because sometimes silence turns into one single roar. As she tried to recreate that night, more questions began to build up inside her...until they turned a very uneasy feeling. Like she had missed something very important.
She expected more than he could give, she always had. And even in the moment of their separation, she was doing the same thing. Maybe it was that little part of her that was making up this dream, that she continued to have every night.
For her, there had always been a very thin line between fantasy and reality, and it was slowly beginning to fade away, dissolving into nothingness. That little part of her could not seem to differentiate between what was real and what she wanted to believe was real.
It was a battle she fought with herself. It was difficult to shut out the presence of someone she had created within her.